How to set up your saddle

Before you loosen anything, record your current position. If the new setup doesn't work, you want to be able to get back to exactly where you were rather than guessing.

Three numbers. Put them somewhere you'll find them again.

Here's the part most people miss. Saddles are not all the same thickness, so bolting a new one to the same seatpost height puts you at a different effective height. Reactive Padding also compresses differently from foam under load — it's firmer at first contact and progressive after that — so a saddle that measures the same when you're standing beside the bike can sit you a few millimetres differently once you're on it.

Set the new saddle to the same height you recorded in step one, measured the same way — bottom bracket to the point you sit. Then check it on the bike.

Checking it

1. Get on the bike on a trainer, or with someone holding you steady.
2. Pedal easily for a minute, then stop with one crank at its lowest point.
3. Look at that knee. You want a slight bend — somewhere around 25 to 35 degrees of flex. Not locked out, not noticeably bent.
4. Your hips should stay level. If you're rocking side to side to reach the bottom of the stroke, the saddle is too high.

Adjust in 3 mm steps. More than that and you're changing two things at once.

Saddle shapes differ, so the same rail position does not put your sit bones in the same place. Rather than copying the rail clamp position from your old saddle, match where your body ends up.

1. Sit on the bike in your normal riding position — hoods, not tops.
2. Bring the cranks level, forward foot at three o'clock.
3. Drop a plumb line from just below your forward kneecap. As a starting reference, it wants to fall roughly over the pedal spindle.

Treat that as a starting point, not a rule — it's a rough guide that gets people close, and plenty of well-fitted riders sit ahead of or behind it. What matters more is that you feel supported without having to hold yourself in place.

If you change nothing else, change this. Nose angle is the single most common setup error I see, and it's the one most likely to cause the pressure people blame the saddle for.

Start level. Rest your phone along the flat centre section of the saddle — not on the curve at the nose or the tail, which will read wrong — and set it to zero.

From level, most riders end up somewhere between level and about two degrees nose-down. Adjust one degree at a time and ride on it before going further.

Then tighten to your seatpost manufacturer's torque specification. If your saddle has carbon rails, use a torque wrench — this is not a place to guess.

Don't judge a saddle on the first ride. Two reasons.

The first is mechanical: Reactive Padding loads progressively, which means it behaves differently at mile fifty than it does in the first five minutes, and your first impression is formed in exactly the wrong window.

The second is you. If you've been riding something that hurts, you've learned to brace against it — subtle changes in how you sit, where you put your weight, how you get out of the saddle. That pattern doesn't switch off the moment the saddle changes. It takes a few hours of riding for your body to stop protecting itself and settle.

Three rides, then decide. And if you adjust something, change one thing at a time and ride on it before changing the next.

Find what you're feeling, try the adjustment, ride on it.

Measuring your sit bones at home

Put a piece of corrugated cardboard on a hard, flat chair or a stair. Sit on it, lift your feet, and lean forward slightly into a riding posture. Stand up and you'll see two impressions. Measure centre to centre.

That measurement is your sit bone width. From there, you want a saddle roughly 20–30 mm wider than the measurement.

But width alone won't get you there, because it isn't your sit bones that decide where you sit — it's your posture. The lower and further forward you ride, the more your pelvis rotates forward and the more weight moves off the sit bones onto the front of the saddle, which wants a narrower platform. Sit upright and your weight drops straight down through the sit bones, which wants a wider one. Two riders with identical sit bones and different positions need different saddles.

Which posture are you?

Your short list

Find your row, then your column. What comes back is two or three saddles rather than one, and that's deliberate — measurement and position narrow the field, but they don't settle it. Shape does the rest, and shape is a preference. Every saddle listed in your cell will fit you.

If you're on the boundary between two bands, let your position break the tie — aggressive riders go narrower, upright riders go wider. And if your cell lists a 145 and a 155, both will work; the wider one gives you more support on the sit bones, the narrower one gives you more room for your legs at the front.

The models aren't interchangeable either. Modus is the stiffest thing we make — carbon shell, carbon rails, minimal flex — which is what you want when you're already rotated forward and putting power down. Optima is the middle of the range and suits the largest number of riders. Ultima carries more Reactive Padding than any other model we build, which is why it's the answer for upright positions, where your weight sits squarely on the sit bones for the whole ride rather than being spread across your hands and pedals.

Where the table says Optima Ti / S, both are 145 mm and both run titanium rails — so either one is the right width for you. What differs is the feel. The S carries less padding on a flatter platform and is slightly lighter. The Ti carries more padding, has more slope through the platform shape, and more flex in the composite shell. At 155 mm there is one Optima, the Ti.